This Week At City Hall: Safeway’s Big Day, Taxi Report, More!

A funny thing I’ve noticed: Say what you will about the final plans for the Safeway on 13th Ave, but over the last seven or so months that giant grocery chain has done a better job of getting the public involved in the redevelopment of their private property than the Regina Public Library has done over the last two years with the redevelopment of the central branch — a building that’s owned by the public.

That’s a meme I think needs some spreading around. However small the shit Safeway gives about what you think of their store redesign, it’s a shit many orders of magnitude larger than the one given by the RPL Board where your thoughts on the central branch project are concerned.

Oh. I think I feel an infographic coming on….

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because at city council’s meeting on Tuesday evening, Safeway will be bringing it’s proposed redesign forward for final approval. There will be at least two delegations coming forward to speak against it.

Now, personally, I think I’ve pretty much written all that needs to be written on the subject. And by typing “Safeway” into that search window above, you can read it yourself if you feel the need.

Or you can show up for council tomorrow night and see what all the hubbub is about in person.

Tuesday, February 20CITY COUNCIL (5:30pm): Beyond the Safeway issue, council will also be considering some amendments to the taxi bylaw. Apparently, some in the industry aren’t too happy that a bunch of new taxi licenses will be issued by a lottery system (and I know this because I was talking to a cab driver the other day on the way home from the mayor’s announcement that he won’t be seeking re-election). They’re also annoyed that drivers are being forced to install cameras and GPS systems in their cars on a much quicker schedule than had been initially agreed upon. Sounds like some of the items will be referred back to administration, so maybe this can all be resolved without the drivers getting upset.

Also on the agenda, the former Salvation Army Citadel at 1772 Montreal St will be considered for a heritage designation. City hall will be hiring three consultants to work on the project to replace Mosaic Stadium — an architectural advisor, an engineering advisor and a fairness advisor. The first two sound pretty straightforward but what’s a fairness advisor? Seems that as the new stadium deal will be going forward as a Public-Private Partnership project, the fairness advisor will be on board to make sure that process is conducted on the up and up.

Oh, incidentally, anyone have any idea why “advisor” keeps coming up as not a word to my spell check? Addvisor. Advissor. Adviser. Oh. No red line on that last one. My idiot computer wants to spell it with an “e”. That just looks dumb.

And now just to further piss off the automatic spell checker thing in my computer, I’m going to write neighbour a bunch of times. Neighbour. Neighbour. Neighbour.

Council will also consider spending $5 million on security upgrades for city hall. M’thinks they’re more traumatized by that naked man incident from two years ago than they let on. $5 mil seems like a bit of overkill, though.

And they will also be looking at hiring a consultant to handle the transportation master plan, they’ll be giving their approval to the housing strategy work plan and they’ll be giving the nod to the annual local improvements program.

And those are all the big items. You can read the rest of what’s council’s agenda and read the full report on the city’s website.

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Author: Paul Dechene

Paul Dechene is 5'10'' tall and he was born in a place. He's not there now. He's sitting in front of his computer writing his bio for this blog. He has a song stuck in his head. It's "Girl From Ipanema", thanks for asking.
You can follow Paul on Twitter at @pauldechene and get live updates during city council meetings and other city events at @PDcityhall.
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